The Dissolute Duke(35)

Her brothers had bought her a gift of inestimable value, a man she could respect and admire and adore—a man who had risked his life to save hers and who now lay unconscious as payment for his valour.

Already the sun had fallen, daylight leached from dusk, the long shadow of night upon them. Holding him closer, she tried to impart some of her warmth into his cold, her fingers tracing the shape of him in the darkness.

He was hers and she would protect him. At Alderworth now the alarm would surely have been raised and help would be coming.

The sounds of others came quietly at first and then more loudly, the length of rope trailing above twitching and raised. She could see nothing now, the black complete.

Then there were more voices, men’s voices. She recognised some of the tones of the Alderworth servants as another line dropped down beside her. A thicker rope this time and longer.

When a figure came from out of the gloom she could only watch, scared to move in case she hurt Taylen further.

A tinder flared and then there was light, a face outlined by the flame. He pulled three times on the rope and another one dropped, a man she did not recognise at all on the end of it. In his hands was a long roll of heavy calico, the ends tied to folded poles of wood.

‘Briggs, your Grace. The dog led us here. Has he woken at all?’

She shook her head in answer.

‘The doctor has been summoned and will be at the house by the time we are back with him.’

Laying the fabric of the stretcher to one side, they pulled the contraption into a narrow bed. The mud and water had soaked through the canvas even before they lifted Taylen slowly on to it. The pain must have leaked into his unconscious mind for he groaned, the ache in his voice making Lucinda grimace.

‘Be careful,’ she pleaded as the stretcher was hoisted, one foot up from the ground and then two, both men steadying an end each as they all rose, the eerie shadows of the torches showing up broken patches of the sheer earthen walls.

She was the only one left down here now, and she got to her feet unsteadily after such a long time sitting, the stretcher disappearing over the top of the lip in a calm and easy way.

Safety. Lucinda could almost taste the relief of it. The dog was barking and more lights above took away the gloom. She could make out the flares against the black sky as another figure descended. Briggs again and holding the rope she had fashioned into foot and finger holds out to her.

‘I will come up beside you, your Grace. Just hold on and they will pull you up.’

A moment later jostling hands helped her over the top and she was once again standing in open air, the huge blackness of sky above her, a few stars twinkling through the gaps in the clouds.

Taylen lay motionless, his cheeks pale and the dark runnels of dried blood powdered on his temple. He barely seemed alive, though when Lucinda laid her hand against his he tried to turn and say something. His green eyes were lost in the swollen bruising.

‘You are safe now,’ she said. ‘There will be no more pain, I promise.’ As if he understood his eyes closed of their own accord and he breathed out, heavily.

The blankets covering him were thick and warm and Lucinda felt someone place another one across her shoulders. When a cart was drawn into place a few yards away she watched as more blankets were laid down on the floor as a cushion to transport her husband back to Alderworth.

Swan the dog crawled in beside him.

‘The Duke will need complete rest and quiet,’ the doctor proclaimed as he regarded Taylen a few hours later. ‘He has had a nasty knock to his head and concussion has resulted. From my experience with similar cases it may be a week or so until he comes to his senses, for Briggs told me it was at least twelve feet to the bottom of the well.’

The Ellesmere physician stood to one side of the bed as he stated his findings, a passionless man with little in the way of a comforting bedside manner.

‘But he will recover?’ Lucinda asked the question with trepidation, for Taylen was looking worse and worse as the hours marched on.

‘The brain has its own peculiar timings and reasons to stay inactive; some people come back to consciousness very quickly, others languish on the netherworld for weeks or months or even years. Some stay there for ever. It is God’s will. Talk to him. Tell him all the news of the house. There is a new school of thought gaining traction that says those in a deep coma are none the less aware of things about them if they have a constant source of translation from a loved one.’

A loved one? Did she qualify as that or would any interaction between them make him even worse?

‘If you need me in what is left of the night, send a messenger. Otherwise I will return tomorrow afternoon to see how my patient is progressing.’

Then he was gone, Taylen lying still and Mrs Berwick fussing about with the sheets at his side.

‘Are you certain you do not wish me to stay, your Grace?’

Lucinda shook her head, not trusting herself to speak and when the woman finally took her leave she sat on a chair beside her husband and reached for his hand. The nail on his right thumb had been pulled off and there were cuts across the fingers. ‘If I could heal you, my darling, I would,’ she murmured, tucking the blanket in further and dousing the candles so that only one still blazed, protected by a glass cover as a precaution against fire.

She watched him as the sun appeared above the hills that she held no name for, the horizon aglow with pink and yellow. She watched the rise and fall of his breath, too, and the pulse in his throat where the stubble of a twelve-hour growth darkened his skin.

His chest was bare and she could just make out the tail end of the scars by his neck where the marks had curved around from his back and licked at the sensitive folds of his throat.

Hurt by life and by his family, and then censured by society and tossed out of England all because of her lies. And all the time he had stood up to her brothers with the knowledge of what he had not done. Halsey, too. The broken ribs and the ruined face. Nobody had ever believed in him and loved him as they should have.

Nobody until now. Her grip tightened.

‘I love you, Taylen. I love you so much that it hurts.’ She hated the tears that were gathering in her eyes. ‘If you die I don’t know what I will do because there is nobody else who understands me, who makes me feel … perfect.’

Not flawed, not foolish, not merely pretty, but beautiful and strong and completely herself. Finally after all these years she knew what she had been missing, a friend, a lover, a man who might sacrifice his life to save her own.

Anger came next and she shook his hand before holding it to her lips. ‘Don’t you dare leave me, Taylen, because if you do I will kill you, I swear that I will …’

‘Water?’ The voice came croaky and deep as dark-green eyes found hers, dazed with the strong painkillers. She could not quite believe that he was conscious.

‘You can hear me?’

He nodded. ‘You were … threatening me.’

‘And loving you.’ She had to say it, had to make him understand.

‘That, too.’ The creases around his eyes deepened.

‘For ever. I will love you for ever.’ She did not try to stop the tears now as they fell in runnels down her cheeks.

Tipping his head, she offered him a drink of boiled water from a jug, careful to give only small sips in the way that the doctor had directed.

Pain scrawled deep lines into his face and he grimaced as he tried to move.

‘You have a bad bump to the head and your ankle is sprained. The doctor says you are to stay very still. He will be pleased to know you have woken.’

‘How … long?’

‘Just a few hours. It is five o’clock in the morning and they brought you to Alderworth last night after eleven.’

Reaching for her hand, he held on.

‘Don’t go.’

Before she could even answer he had fallen back to sleep.

Everything hurt. His head and his eyes and his neck. He had a tight bandage wound around the top of his forehead and a flickering light had been left beside him.

Lucinda—his last moments of seeing her safe, climbing up the rope from the well at the bottom of the Thompson’s Ranges. She had spoken to him some time later in the cold and the mud and then again somewhere else.

Here. His bedroom. A small hand entwined in his own. Warmth and hope and safety, her breathing even and deep beside him and the moon waning towards the dawn. Home. With his wife. Closing his eyes again, he fell asleep.

Asher Wellingham was there when he next woke up, stretched out on a chair, his long legs before him. Lucinda had gone. He felt around for her with the hand that she had held and found the bed empty.

It was almost noon because the sun was high and the shadows at the window folded down on to one another. The blue openness of sky through the drawn curtains hurt his eyes with its brightness.

‘You saved Lucy and put your own life at risk. I want to thank you for that. If you had not come when you did …’ He stopped, regrouping emotion before beginning again.

Seeing him awake, Asher spoke, as if his message was urgent. ‘Lucinda has told us that she was mistaken about her allegations of intimacy with you at Alderworth three years ago. We had you thrown out of England on a lie, Alderworth, and you would have good reason to hate us.’

All these words at once, Tay thought, tumbling into the air around him. Where was his wife? He wanted her back.